A co-founder of Avangate, Cristian Badea is the digital commerce provider’s Chief Information Officer.  A pioneer in Cloud-based commerce applications, Cristian has dedicated himself to being the value-added bridge between technology and business, making technology an enabler for business growth and efficient scaling. A developer by profession, Cristian has contributed to the success of RAV, the first Eastern European company to be bought by Microsoft. He also built from the ground up the backbone of two digital commerce platforms, and was involved in the process of attracting investment and acquisition for these companies: ePayment (sold to Naspers) and Avangate (sold to Francisco Partners). At Avangate, Cristian is leading multi-departmental projects addressing solution capabilities, innovation, scalability and security. With a strategic vision, Cristian also dives into the nitty-gritty of payment processing functionality, fraud detection, PCI compliance, global content delivery networks and server management, to name a few areas. Dad, cook, biker, photographer.